First FreeNAS server - Build Help | Parts List

[Nitro]

Hey everyone!

New to the forums and have had a chance to browse around on the site. I wanted to share the parts that I have come up with and hope it gets the blessings of everyone here. Things to note, everywhere that I read before finding these forums, that the OS should be ran on a flash drive. On here I see that other items that are being suggested as flash drives aren't that reliable. So that is currently left off of the build list ATM.

So I want to run this build as ZFS2 RAIDZ2, which I currently have the 3TB drives configured (priced at student rate from Western Digital store, 20% discount). I could cut the cost and go with 2TB drives instead, but haven't decided fully yet. I wanted to keep this around $1000, but going a little over is fine too. I also had a question regarding the PSU that I selected, is that overkill?

I guess what I am getting at is, that I am flexible with the build and that I am open for better suggestions to what I picked out. I asked /r/buildapc and only had one reply, so I am hoping to have more feedback regarding this build.

Thanks everyone.




CPU: Intel - Core i3-6300 3.8GHz Dual-Core Processor ($148.25 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($5.95 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock - E3C236D2I Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial - 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($176.88 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.00) x5
Case: BitFenix - Phenom Midnight Black Mini ITX Tower Case ($85.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Cable Matters (3 Pack) 90 Degree Right-Angle 6.0 Gbps SATA III Cable - 24 Inches ($7.99) x2
Total: $1202.03

Mod note: Edited to remove pcpartpicker links, as per the forum rules. Also, undid pcpartpicker's retarded "list the hard drives five times instead of attaching a number to the listing" thing.

Mod note 2: It's RAIDZ2. Not ZRAID2, ZFS2 or anything else. Please use proper terminology.

- Ericloewe

 

[SweetAndLow]

Skip the CPU cooler you can use the stock cooler. This way you can also skip the thermal compound and save more money. For just 5 disks that power supply is overkill. Get a seasonic 450w psu.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[danb35]

Or you could just buy a Proliant ML10 and save yourself $390.

 

[danb35]

Things to note, everywhere that I read before finding these forums, that the OS should be ran on a flash drive. On here I see that other items that are being suggested as flash drives aren't that reliable.

The standard for FreeNAS since its inception was for it to be run from a small flash device, usually a USB stick. They're cheap, widely available, usually work adequately, and the consequences of failure are minimal (install FreeNAS to a new one, upload your saved config file, and you're back in business). OTOH, they're pretty slow, especially for writes, and they are pretty unreliable. Speed doesn't matter much--most of the OS lives in RAM most of the time, and it isn't expected that you'd be rebooting your system very often. Installing updates is the biggest place you'd notice the speed issue.

A small SSD is both faster and more reliable, and doesn't cost much. It does take a SATA port though. If you have the SATA port to spare, it's probably a worthwhile upgrade.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Or you could just buy a Proliant ML10 and save yourself $390.

Would do this, yesterday the ml10 was only $179 for the i3 version.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[Ericloewe]

CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($5.95 @ Newegg)

Skip these...

Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)

And use the money to get a better PSU. Corsair RM, Seasonic G-Series (or the brand-new Seasonic Focus Gold, if you can deal with in-cable capacitors).

Power rating is fine, but a 450-500W PSU is closer to what you'd want, considering how many drives you can fit in that thing.

(Naturally, if you want better cooling and a decent PSU, go with a good cooler instead, like Noctua's 90mm offerings)

 

[Nitro]

Skip these...


And use the money to get a better PSU. Corsair RM, Seasonic G-Series (or the brand-new Seasonic Focus Gold, if you can deal with in-cable capacitors).

Power rating is fine, but a 450-500W PSU is closer to what you'd want, considering how many drives you can fit in that thing.

(Naturally, if you want better cooling and a decent PSU, go with a good cooler instead, like Noctua's 90mm offerings)

Sorry about the comment via ZFS2, should haven't posted without fully re-reading my post. Thanks for noting my incorrect use of that.

So I just looked into the Corsair RM series and it seems they are hard to come by now a days. So I'll look into a Seasonic PSU. Sort of a Corsair fan boy, but I'll consider jumping ship for something that's better in the long run.

As for the CPU cooler, I was just worried about the loudness of the stock cooler. But like you mentioned, Noctua does have some decent coolers.

The standard for FreeNAS since its inception was for it to be run from a small flash device, usually a USB stick. They're cheap, widely available, usually work adequately, and the consequences of failure are minimal (install FreeNAS to a new one, upload your saved config file, and you're back in business). OTOH, they're pretty slow, especially for writes, and they are pretty unreliable. Speed doesn't matter much--most of the OS lives in RAM most of the time, and it isn't expected that you'd be rebooting your system very often. Installing updates is the biggest place you'd notice the speed issue.

A small SSD is both faster and more reliable, and doesn't cost much. It does take a SATA port though. If you have the SATA port to spare, it's probably a worthwhile upgrade.

I was thinking about doing that. A small SSD to help out with that and SSD's are much better these days. I originally thought about using a SSD for cache, but from what I read, that is pointless until you reach your max RAM. But for this purpose, I think I will get an SSD over a USB drive.



Here's a question, would either of you recommend 4 drives for RAIDZ2? I see that is the minimum for it to operate at, but I want to know if I am making a better choice by sticking with 5 instead.

 

[SweetAndLow]

The more drives the more storage you get. With 4 drives you get 50% with 5 drives you get 60%. 5 drives would be good, 6 would be better and up to about 10 disks.

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

 

[joeschmuck]

As for the CPU cooler, I was just worried about the loudness of the stock cooler.

The boxed cooler is quiet these days.

I think I will get an SSD over a USB drive.

Smart man.

Here's a question, would either of you recommend 4 drives for RAIDZ2? I see that is the minimum for it to operate at, but I want to know if I am making a better choice by sticking with 5 instead.

There are pros and cons here. But first you never specified how much usable storage space you need to have and you never specified your use case for the server. Do you need 20TB of storage and are planning to stream movies and maybe sore a bit of data or do you plan to run some cloud server for a gaming application? These things matter in the selection of your hardware. Also the case makes a difference. I noticed that the case only holds 6 hard drives and it looks like it comes with a single fan in the front grill and you may need to consider adding another fan to keep the upper drives cool.

4 drives VS. 5 drives, it doesn't matter unless you have a need for speed, and maybe cost. One thing which is impacted by the number of drives in a pool is how long it takes to replace a hard drive (resilver). Given the same amount of data in a pool, the more hard drives there are, the less amount of time it take to complete the resilvering process. This is why we recommend a RAIDZ2 setup quite often.

Here is my situation: I run six 2TB hard drives which gives me 7.3TB storage (subtract 20% for actual usable space). I will be replacing my hard drives soon and I'm looking into options like 3 mirrored 8TB drives or 4 RAIDZ2 4TB drives or 5 RAIDZ2 3TB drives. Either of these combinations would replace my present pool with an equal or slightly greater storage capacity. I'm trying to reduce the total number of hard drives just becasue I want to. I don't have any I/O intensive read/write operation on my server so this works for me.

I hope this doesn't confuse you more. But, figure out what kind of capacity you expect to need over the next 3 to 4 years, add 20% to that, use a RAIDZ2 calculator and you will be able to see what you can use/live with.

 

[Nitro]

The boxed cooler is quiet these days.

Oh that's good to know, I guess in the end if I want something quieter, I can find something later.

There are pros and cons here. But first you never specified how much usable storage space you need to have and you never specified your use case for the server. Do you need 20TB of storage and are planning to stream movies and maybe sore a bit of data or do you plan to run some cloud server for a gaming application? These things matter in the selection of your hardware. Also the case makes a difference. I noticed that the case only holds 6 hard drives and it looks like it comes with a single fan in the front grill and you may need to consider adding another fan to keep the upper drives cool.

4 drives VS. 5 drives, it doesn't matter unless you have a need for speed, and maybe cost. One thing which is impacted by the number of drives in a pool is how long it takes to replace a hard drive (resilver). Given the same amount of data in a pool, the more hard drives there are, the less amount of time it take to complete the resilvering process. This is why we recommend a RAIDZ2 setup quite often.

Here is my situation: I run six 2TB hard drives which gives me 7.3TB storage (subtract 20% for actual usable space). I will be replacing my hard drives soon and I'm looking into options like 3 mirrored 8TB drives or 4 RAIDZ2 4TB drives or 5 RAIDZ2 3TB drives. Either of these combinations would replace my present pool with an equal or slightly greater storage capacity. I'm trying to reduce the total number of hard drives just becasue I want to. I don't have any I/O intensive read/write operation on my server so this works for me.

I hope this doesn't confuse you more. But, figure out what kind of capacity you expect to need over the next 3 to 4 years, add 20% to that, use a RAIDZ2 calculator and you will be able to see what you can use/live with.

Good point, I never did specify my space requirements. I guess the main thing that started all of this was I had a 2TB drive that failed earlier this year that had our photos, documents and such on it where there is nearly 700GB of photo/videos alone on there (wife is an amateur photographer that only does things for our family, no clients). Luckily I had an offsite backup plan that saved my butt, but I wanted something that's more reliable than what I have currently. So this is priority #1. The time that took her to get to 700GB is over the course of 10 years, but she does like to save her photos in RAW for that post editing stuff.

As for the other things like supporting a media server, I do have another drive in my current machine that has a good amount of movies and shows that I would like to add to this build. So as of right now, that's roughly 1.5TB worth. I could slim that down, but for discussions sake we can say that I currently have that and it will likely grow.

So for a starting point, that's 2.2TB worth of data that I want on there. Another thing that I was hopeful for this build is to have backups of the two machines on our network if the event one of them decides to go nuclear and I can restore from it. So all in all, data storage, lightweight streaming, and backups is what I want out of this build.

 

[joeschmuck]

You appear to have similar storage needs as I do and likely the same capacity requirements. I have a lot of backups of six different computers in my home, got the movies, got the photos, got the music, and got lots of OS and Program files (like Acrobat 10, Acronis, MS Office 2013, etc...).

In my examples above right now I like the three mirrored 8TB drives. The pool structure means the data flow is only as fast as a single hard drive (what you are currently doing) but aal your data is on all three drives and all the drives would have to fail for your data to be lost. The downside to using very large hard drives is it take a long time to rebuild a new drive. If I had to buy new drives today, this would be my primary desire but I haven't priced out the cost of the drives yet and that will be a deciding factor. But four 4TB drives looks good too.

Luckily I had an offsite backup plan that saved my butt,

And ensure you retain that backup copy. You can't ensure against the NAS being damaged, stolen, or whatever so having an offsite backup of the important data is just smart.

 

[Nitro]

You appear to have similar storage needs as I do and likely the same capacity requirements. I have a lot of backups of six different computers in my home, got the movies, got the photos, got the music, and got lots of OS and Program files (like Acrobat 10, Acronis, MS Office 2013, etc...).

In my examples above right now I like the three mirrored 8TB drives. The pool structure means the data flow is only as fast as a single hard drive (what you are currently doing) but aal your data is on all three drives and all the drives would have to fail for your data to be lost. The downside to using very large hard drives is it take a long time to rebuild a new drive. If I had to buy new drives today, this would be my primary desire but I haven't priced out the cost of the drives yet and that will be a deciding factor. But four 4TB drives looks good too.


And ensure you retain that backup copy. You can't ensure against the NAS being damaged, stolen, or whatever so having an offsite backup of the important data is just smart.

That last bit, I whole heartedly agree. But I am only backing up the photos to the offline storage which I am allotted 2TB a year worth space. Using Sync.com as my offsite backup solution. As for the reason why I chose RAIDZ2 vs the other combinations, I work as a Windows System Admin and the servers that manage (old Dell 2850/2950 about 90% of them) are setup as a Raid 1 (2 drives) for the OS setup and Raid 5 (4 drives) for the Data Storage. I do not like either of those setups. Mainly if I ever lose more than 1 drive in any combination of raid, I am screwed and theres really nothing I can do about it except maintain what I got until we're fully migrated to our new cloud servers. Can't WAIT!

So I don't want that same scenario of having to rush or worry if I lose 1 drive, I am potentially about to have a catastrophic failure. I don't know the reliability rate of the NAS drives (WD Red, Deskstar or Ironwolf), so I don't want to worry or feel like I need to constantly have a multiple spares if this setup is going to chew through drives. All of this worries me as you can tell, data storage is no joke and I want to have a better plan than what I currently have for my home. I think going with 5x3TB drives in RaidZ2 combination is going to be my best bet for this setup.

Here's a question, if I decide later on down the road I want to swap my 3TB drives for something more and keep my data (basically upgrading the drive capacity) how is that done?

 

[iammykyl]

Hey everyone!
I also had a question regarding the PSU that I selected, is that overkill?

I guess what I am getting at is, that I am flexible with the build and that I am open for better suggestions to what I picked out. I asked /r/buildapc and only had one reply, so I am hoping to have more feedback regarding this build.

Thanks everyone.




CPU: Intel - Core i3-6300 3.8GHz Dual-Core Processor ($148.25 @ Amazon)
CPU Cooler: CRYORIG - C7 40.5 CFM CPU Cooler ($29.99 @ Amazon)
Thermal Compound: Arctic Silver - 5 High-Density Polysynthetic Silver 3.5g Thermal Paste ($5.95 @ Newegg)
Motherboard: ASRock - E3C236D2I Mini ITX LGA1151 Motherboard ($239.99 @ Newegg)
Memory: Crucial - 16GB (1 x 16GB) DDR4-2133 Memory ($176.88 @ Amazon)
Storage: Western Digital - Red 3TB 3.5" 5400RPM Internal Hard Drive ($88.00) x5
Case: BitFenix - Phenom Midnight Black Mini ITX Tower Case ($85.00 @ Amazon)
Power Supply: Corsair - CXM 650W 80+ Bronze Certified Semi-Modular ATX Power Supply ($59.99 @ Amazon)
Other: Cable Matters (3 Pack) 90 Degree Right-Angle 6.0 Gbps SATA III Cable - 24 Inches ($7.99) x2
Total: $1202.03

Some suggestions, but by no means a criticism of your build.
By choosing a Mini platform you are limiting choices. MBs are more expensive, max memory 32GB, 5/6 SATA, and upgrade path.
Consider a Macro build.
Case, better airflow, more drive bays, https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=CA-N804BL&c=CJ $94.99
MB, 8 SATA + 2 x SuperDOM https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813183013&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker, LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID= $184.99
CPU, slightly faster, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VPX48I/?tag=pcpapi-20 $159.99
RAM, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...4wfd8213_16gb_eudimm_ddr4_2133_pc4_17000.html $167.49
PSU, even allowing for 8 drive spin up, a 450 W will be more than enough, this has 7 year warranty, https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-BWG450M&c=CJ $66.99
Review, http://www.anandtech.com/show/11123/the-bitfenix-whisper-m-450w-850w-psu-review/5
Including your Matters cables, $706.42
5 drives, $440 Total $1146, 42.

 

[danb35]

Here's a question, if I decide later on down the road I want to swap my 3TB drives for something more and keep my data (basically upgrading the drive capacity) how is that done?

Replace one disk at a time with the larger disks; the pool will expand automatically once the last disk is replaced. http://doc.freenas.org/11/storage.html#replacing-drives-to-grow-a-zfs-pool

 

[Nitro]

Replace one disk at a time with the larger disks; the pool will expand automatically once the last disk is replaced. http://doc.freenas.org/11/storage.html#replacing-drives-to-grow-a-zfs-pool

Awesome! Thank you. I was worried that I would have to do something special when I originally created the vdev, but I assume not. I'll take at the link that you provided here.

 

[Nitro]

Some suggestions, but by no means a criticism of your build.
By choosing a Mini platform you are limiting choices. MBs are more expensive, max memory 32GB, 5/6 SATA, and upgrade path.
Consider a Macro build.
Case, better airflow, more drive bays, https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=CA-N804BL&c=CJ $94.99
MB, 8 SATA + 2 x SuperDOM https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813183013&nm_mc=AFC-C8Junction&cm_mmc=AFC-C8Junction-PCPartPicker, LLC-_-na-_-na-_-na&cm_sp=&AID=10446076&PID=3938566&SID= $184.99
CPU, slightly faster, https://www.amazon.com/dp/B015VPX48I/?tag=pcpapi-20 $159.99
RAM, https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/prod...4wfd8213_16gb_eudimm_ddr4_2133_pc4_17000.html $167.49
PSU, even allowing for 8 drive spin up, a 450 W will be more than enough, this has 7 year warranty, https://www.superbiiz.com/detail.php?name=PS-BWG450M&c=CJ $66.99
Review, http://www.anandtech.com/show/11123/the-bitfenix-whisper-m-450w-850w-psu-review/5
Including your Matters cables, $706.42
5 drives, $440 Total $1146, 42.

Thanks for the input here, I will definitely take a look at what you provided. The only thing I wanted to do was stray away from the fractal cases in this build. There is nothing that I really can explain as to why, I just don't really like the look of I suppose lol. So if I would get something that would support the MB size, it's going to be a tower of sorts in this case. The main reason I liked the bitfenix case in my build, it had all of the drive cages supported right off the bat. I wouldn't have to buy them extra like some of the NZXT cases, which I think is silly. For everything else though, thanks. :)

 

[Stux]

So I just looked into the Corsair RM series and it seems they are hard to come by now a days

Really? You're looking at the RMx range right? RM was replaced by RMi and RMx a while back.

https://m.newegg.com/ProductList?keyword=corsair+rm550x

 

[Stux]

But four 4TB drives looks good too

4x 4TB in Raidz2 gives about the same storage and redundancy as 3x 8TB in a 3 way mirror.

But should be about a 3rd cheaper. And will write twice as fast.

 

[Stux]

And don't forget to use ECC ram.

 

[Nitro]

Really? You're looking at the RMx range right? RM was replaced by RMi and RMx a while back.

https://m.newegg.com/ProductList?keyword=corsair+rm550x

I really did not see those. Thanks!

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk